Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Dead Guild Walking

I don't have much hope for my guild. Something like 90% of the raiding core has left. The remaining 10% are frantically recruiting. We're essentially going to be starting a new raiding guild, only under the old name.

I have no idea what I should do. I could stay, and help them rebuild. But I think that will take a long time. And there doesn't seem to be any inclination to correcting the structural flaws that, in my view, caused this rift. Rather, the leadership appears to be treating the problem as a social problem, as if it's merely a problem of sufficient numbers before we start raiding again. I am not sure that this is a prudent course of action. Of course, I'm not one of the guild leaders, so I may just be out of the loop.

I could leave and apply to another raiding guild. This guild allowed me to melee-heal, though, and I really don't want to healbot. As well, most other guilds on this server have an EST raid schedule, and I'm PST. In fact, the server is CST, but I think it got transfers from both EST and PST servers, which led to silliness.

A last option is to wait until character transfers open for this server, and go back to my old realm or another PST realm.

It would be easier if I felt loyalty to, or was good friends with, anyone in the guild. Then I could follow their lead and go and stay as they did. But I'm don't. I'm just a member who shows up and does my part. As well, I think neither side of the split was fully wrong or fully right. They both made mistakes, and both sides had their virtues. It would be easier if one side was absolutely wrong, because then I could just make a decision based on what they did.

Where did this guild go wrong? Looking back, I think it came down to a lack of order. Rules were not fully thought out and laid down properly. The leadership structure was unstable, basically split between three people. The split came when one officer was on an extended absence, and the other two officers had a serious disagreement.

The DKP system, while fair, was very complex, and burned out multiple DKP Officers. As well, the DKP system wasn't really auditable. You couldn't really keep track of your own DKP, and easily correct the officers when they made a mistake. Instead all you had was a vague sense that things weren't adding up. To be honest, I could never tell how much DKP I had, only in relative terms to the other paladins. Of course, this never mattered, as Lawbringer rarely dropped.

(The guild also had an annoying habit of /gkicking people as a joke, which I didn't like. Does being in the guild mean so little that being booted is a laughing matter?)

Of course, I'm a very lawful sort of person, and not all that good with people, so I may be seeing things through that lens. To me, rules create expectations, so one knows what is required of all parties. Otherwise, you have go by feeling and unspoken agreements. The trick, of course, is to have the exact amount of rules to create shared expections. Too many rules lead to inflexibility and stagnation. But this guild didn't really have enough rules. Or rather, enough rules spelling out the basics.

I kind of wish I had spoken up a bit earlier. Outlined my concerns. But you know how it is, when you're not part of the core that really runs things. You're hesitant to interfere with them, especially as people seem to be happy with how things are going, and things are actually going well. You don't really hear the different factions.

Seems to me you should start looking for a new guild. Certainly there must be other guilds that will let you melee-heal.

People spend so much time in guilds and with the other guildies that I find it extremely important to be happy in the guild. After all... its about having fun. Not just hunting epics (though that is kinda fun as well)...

transfer to a west coast server. It makes life easier when you are on a server in your timezone. gkick can be slightly amusing, but only every three months or so. If you have no real loyalty to the server or guild, do yourself a favour and start over new :)